


Make It Gold

by skyline



Series: Not Like Gold In Your Dreams [2]
Category: Big Time Rush
Genre: Hunger Games AU, James!Cinna, Kendall!Finnick, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-25
Updated: 2012-04-25
Packaged: 2017-11-09 01:44:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/449878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyline/pseuds/skyline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James can see it now, playing out in his head. Kendall will pop out of the sea like the champagne corks that echoed the night they met, throwing his arms around James’s shoulders, laughing endlessly beneath blue, blue skies. He’ll kiss James like they’ve never been apart. All the pain and betrayal and blood they have fostered will make the taste of salt between their lips that much sweeter. James might even work up the courage to say something real, to finally apologize, or more. Together, they will crash through the surface of the waves. Beneath the surface, they will dissipate, turned to sea foam in each other’s arms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make It Gold

The first time James fucks Kendall, Kendall is a virgin. He trembles beneath James's fingertips. He sings a song so sweet and ruined that it sounds like nothing James has ever heard before. And when Kendall comes, he clings to James's body like it is an anchor, like the feel of James buried inside him is the only thing keeping him grounded.  
  
It makes James think of the story of a girl who chose to dissolve into spume rather than destroy the person she loved. The idea of Kendall dissolving is an ache beneath James’s ribcage, in places he thought had long since been swallowed by darkness. He aches and aches and aches because, in this moment, James realizes what he's done.   
  
He wants to take it back, to rewind time, to undo the callous way he's taken advantage of this poor, fucked up, beautiful kid who has already been through much too much. Kendall's fingers fist in the sheets, his blond hair sweat-sticky against his forehead. He gazes up at James with implicit trust, the champagne hazy light turning his green, green eyes the color of sea foam and sunlight.  
  
It is too late to take it back.   
  
Kendall tangles his hands in James's hair, and James loathes that, barely ever lets anyone get away with it, but this is Kendall. The idol-boy James watched with baited breath as he mercilessly killed his fellow Tributes in the last Games. The tragic-boy James has seen slowly fall to pieces over the course of his Victory Tour, regret hanging like a cloak from his shoulders. The shining-boy he found in the midst of a bar fight, ready to take out his anger on the world. James has hated, pitied, and admired Kendall with equal measure from afar.   
  
Up close, he adores him more than he'd known was possible, from the bruise blossoming across his cheekbone to the curl of his toes. He thought using Kendall would be easy. He was so very wrong.   
  
James tries to soften the blow that Kendall does not know is coming. He wraps his arms tight around Kendall's middle and brings them both off again, gentler this time. He soaks in the way Kendall whimpers his name. He revels in the scent of his skin. James lets himself dissolve into the unfathomable depths of those gorgeous green eyes and he tries to forget.   
  
The ache does not go away.   
  
James was not a virgin when he signed on to seduce Kendall. That ship sailed a long time before he met the impish Victor from District Four. Of course, it was only natural that James hadn't waited. He was raised in a cage, like an exotic animal. He grew up knowing an all-consuming thirst for revenge, and by all rights, it's all he ever should have known.   
  
Color was his salvation. Despite the iron in his heart, James had had fire in his head. He could mold the pretty, pale gold of dawn into a tangible form. He could turn sunset into a dress and twilight into a suit. He had _talent_ , where the rest of Thirteen's soldiers only had rage. His District was quick to take advantage. They trained James up and shipped him straight off to the Capitol.   
  
It wasn't freedom; merely trading up for gilded captivity. James hated the pomp and circumstance of his new city the way he was supposed to. Before he was an artist, he was a soldier. These were the very people he was meant to crush.   
  
But James did not hate the _color_. It was everywhere, in rich, brilliant hues. It danced in vivid patterns across the faces of Capitol citizens. It sparkled across the sculptures in the square, miracles in metallurgy. James was so used to gray-brown-tan, to home. He did not understand how a place so evil could spawn the rainbow of variegation that existed everywhere he looked.   
  
He never lacked for inspiration.   
  
James also did not hate the sex. In Thirteen, his encounters with intimacy were rushed, the desperate teenage fumbling of kids who did not know if they would make it through their next sunrise. Here, in the Capitol, making love was an art form. James subjected himself to a skilled pool of instructors, male and female, just to be _thorough_.   
  
He found he had a knack for it. Like fashion, sex was one more talent he'd nearly left undiscovered.   
  
James is the one who figured out how loose-lipped the Capitol lemmings become when they are satisfied. He is the one who realized that it could be used as a weapon.    
  
He'd heard rumors of Tributes from the Games who were bullied into prostitution. For the longest time, James thought they really were just that; rumors, fabricated by his flighty design school friends as a scandalous way to pass the time. As they say, scandal is _everything_ , darling. But as James rose in esteem, he discovered it was true. On the eve of his graduation, a pretty girl from District One bent over backwards to blow him in the library. She was a gift from James’s new employers, celebrating his potential.   
  
She is the piece that made the puzzle click into place. The Capitol likes sex and the Capitol likes Victors. And there is no Victor who holds more sway over their hearts or their _parts_ than the freshly crowned Kendall Knight. He arches in James’s arms, sunshine and the sea in the shape of a boy.   
  
A man, now. James has made him a man.   
  
The least he can do is give Kendall one good night before he snatches it all away.  

  


\---

  
The last time that James fucks Kendall, neither of them is pure.    
  
It’s James’s fault. He destroyed Kendall, and then he remade him, because that is what he does. James builds from ashes. Kendall did not like being a tool, but he gave into it, eventually. He knew that the President would approach him. It was only a matter of time. This way, at least, he could help the cause.    
  
The cause. The rebellion. James hates all the words he is supposed to associate with this uprising they are trying to bring about. It has made him into an oppressor, into the very thing he despises.    
  
He took Kendall back to District Thirteen during the off season. He taught him to fight like a soldier instead of a fishmonger’s son. Kendall knew brute strength, but he did not yet understand strategy or stealth. It was hard to show him how not to shine.    
  
The next lesson was worse. James taught Kendall to fuck like an artist, to draw out each touch, to let his gaze linger. _Take your time_ , he’d warn when Kendall would whine, desperate against him. It wasn’t always easy, keeping it together when James felt like falling apart. With each passing day, Kendall became a current that James could not escape, stronger than a riptide. The harder James fell for him, the more Kendall pulled away.    
  
Now every time Kendall walks into a room, James wonders who has put their hands all over him.   
  
“It’s not so bad,” Kendall says, reading James’s mind while he unfastens his pants. He kisses him, tender in a way that his words aren’t. “I don’t think about you anymore. When I come.”    
  
James winces and takes it like the insult that it is meant to be. Kendall knows how he feels. Sort of. He thinks that James couldn’t help himself; he is Pygmalion and Kendall is Galatea. He’s half right. James cannot deny that he has sculpted Kendall into the man he needed, cautiously, and with great care. What Kendall does not know is how much James regrets it.    
  
There was a night, before Kendall found out that he was a tool. James took him out in the mountains, to a lake that was the broadest and vastest he could find. They swam beneath the starlight, sparkling wet and silver and exactly where Kendall belonged. He slipped under the surface of the water for minutes on end. He would pop out like the champagne corks that resounded the night they met, throwing his arms around James’s shoulders, laughing endlessly.    
  
James knew then that he was screwed. He did not want to take the wild boy- kelpie-quick, daring as a dolphin- and cast him in shadows. He would have rather painted Kendall in sunshine and allowed him to bask in it like a seal on a rock. Together, the both of them could be free.    
  
It didn’t make a difference, in the long run. James would not allow himself to covet the Victor he hand-picked. He followed through with his betrayal, aware that it was a mistake. Only later did he understand how large his error had been. How every slice of envy and pang of yearning and bruised hurt represented bigger stakes. The label for it eluded him as the months stretched on, but he figured out eventually.    
  
He’d never been in love before.    
  
Still. James does not blame Kendall for loving someone else. Because he does love someone else. James isn’t sure how it happened. One day Kendall was the Capitol slut, and the next he was the doting betrothed of crazy Camille, a pretty little Tribute in an endless parade of them. Maybe Kendall always loved her, and James ignored it because he didn’t want to see. It is one thing to fight against the tide of consorts that mill around Kendall every second of every day.    
  
It is another to combat a broken girl who is lovelier than a man like James could ever be.   
  
Kendall grinds back against him now, like a professional, like a tease. He treats James like a client instead of someone that means more.    
  
Does he mean more? He’s never certain.    
  
“No tricks,” James begs into his throat, biting, sucking. “Not tonight.”   
  
Tonight is the last night they have. Kendall will be going back into the arena tomorrow. He will be one step closer to danger than James has ever wanted him. And in the light of day, James will not be able to stand by his favorite Victor. He has to be with Logan, the boy they are all trying to protect, the boy James lit on fire.    
  
James wants Logan to live, yes, most definitely. He is passionate about the boys that he created; the fire that rages out of control and the deluge he can’t ever stop.    
  
But Kendall has sworn to die for Logan, if necessary, and that James cannot stand.    
  
He also cannot tell him _no_. Kendall wouldn’t listen if he tried.    
  
James pumps into him, slow, and Kendall does not tremble. He does not sing, no matter how much James works for it. And when he comes, Kendall grips the side of the rooftop, his nails digging into hard concrete. He has changed, where James has not.    
  
Kendall still calls to him like the sea, like the crash of waves and the thunder of ocean, bluegreenturquoise and salt on his lips. James tells him, “Survive.”    
  
“You too. I can’t believe you pulled that stunt with the tuxedo,” Kendall says. James thinks of his mockingjay suit and smiles. Kendall tugs at the corners of James’s lips, trying to chase it away. His green, green eyes cut like a trident. “Don’t look so happy about it, idiot. I’m going to worry about you both. I’ll go insane.”   
  
“I’ll watch over Camille.”   
  
“Watch over yourself. It’ll be enough,” Kendall retorts.    
  
James wants to tell Kendall that he is loved, but he’s only ever been able to say the words in the midst of sex, where he knows they won’t be rejected. He begins, “When you come back-“   
  
“If.”   
  
“ _When_ you come back,” James barrels on, because knowing that Kendall could die and accepting it are two very, very different things. “I want to see the ocean.”   
  
“Really?” Kendall perks up.    
  
“Really.” James kisses him again, unable to help himself. Kendall may belong to a million different Capitol citizens, to a girl with feral eyes, but he was James’s first. James will always be his first.    
  
“We’ll go,” Kendall promises, confident in a way that he was not seconds before. “I’ll miss you.”   
  
He lets James’s mouth move over his, and if this is to be their last kiss, James decides that he will make it count. He breathes straight from Kendall’s lungs until he cannot stand it any longer, until his throat burns and his head spins and his legs have gone weak beneath him.    
  
Kendall is the one who pulls back, who says goodbye. He has to run off to his mad girl, to sing her sweetly to sleep the way he has not for James in so very long. James stares out at the glittering lights of the Capitol and tells himself that it is okay. They’ll see each other again. They have a date at the ocean in a few weeks’ time.     
  
He does not have to wonder what their reunion will be like. James can see it now, playing out in his head. Kendall will pop out of the sea like the champagne corks that echoed the night they met, throwing his arms around James’s shoulders, laughing endlessly beneath blue, blue skies. He’ll kiss James like they’ve never been apart.    
  
All the pain and betrayal and blood they have fostered will make the taste of salt between their lips that much sweeter. James might even work up the courage to say something real, to finally apologize, or more. Together, they will crash through the surface of the waves.    
  
Beneath the surface, they will dissipate, turned to sea foam in each other’s arms.  


End file.
